Here's the question: Do good intentions count for anything? And how do good intentions translate into behavior? If your heart is in the right place, but you don't do the right thing because you have no clue what the right thing actually is, do you still get brownie points? In the past week, I've experienced two disturbing incidents that have made me wonder whether being well-meaning is enough.

First, let me say that no mountain biker has the right to be anti-cars. The reason is simple: Lots of automotive companies advertise in this magazine. Wait, wait! What I meant to say is: The reason for this is simple--most of us drive to the trailhead. And even if you don't, the odds are some of your buddies do, when they're not freeloading on the trails you carved out by that cabin you bought at the edge of the woods. By the way, what's your address? I'm going to visit and never leave, and you're going to have to stop being a vegetarian by the time I arrive. But back to my point: We mountain bikers are only slightly more inclined to pedal to the trailhead than a surfer is likely to paddle to the ocean from his house.

I've written about this before, so I'll dispense with the excuses people make to justify their recreational commute. With one exception, that is. It is the newest excuse, and on paper, it makes tons of sense: Put a hybrid under your bike rack (if you put a hybrid on top of your rack, sorry, you can't be helped, the Lake of Fire awaits). The idea of converting one's daily, motorized transportation into something like a Toyota Prius seems like a good one. You drive a cleaner car, imagine you're getting better gas mileage than you really are and, best of all, get to use the car pool lane without having to resort to a passenger-seat-mounted blow-up doll dressed in a shawl.

I've driven a couple of hybrids and think they're cool. So do lots of other people, especially in Los Angeles. There are about 600 Priuses living on my block. On Thursdays, when everybody has to move for the 8 a.m. street cleaning, it looks like a Shriners Convention.

With all those cute little electric-gassers hitting the streets of Los Angeles, though, it was only a matter of time until Los Angeles hit back. It happened on a Wednesday morning, traditionally the day I don't use my car, unless some kind of emergency arises, like when I run out of candy corn. I was riding down the street, heading for the 7-Eleven and my morning Super Big Gulp of Diet Dr. Pepper. I was in the bike lane, and there was a little traffic, but it seemed relatively mellow.

Until a horn started honking. And I felt that familiar, adrenaline rush: metal, getting closer. The car was narrowing the bike lane until I was inches from the parked vehicles. I looked over and saw an angry little fellow. He was glaring at me. His passenger-side window slowly began to roll down. We made eye contact. I smiled.

"Get onto the sidewalk, douche bag!" he screamed.

Now, I am not one of those cyclists who chases cars or pulls drivers out from behind the wheel and hacks them to death with a machete. That's because I am a peace-loving gent. But even if I were the violent sort, I'd have been too speechless to do anything. The guy had a sticker on his car that advertised the call letters of, and his membership in, the local public radio station. The guy had a half-scratched-off Kerry-Edwards bumper sticker. But ultimately, road rage from somebody like that wouldn't entirely shock me, though more likely he'd run a cyclist over by accident, distracted by the pint of Ben & Jerry's in his lap.

It was the car itself--the thing he was driving--that left me astonished. It was a white Prius. The next day the question of good intentions emerged again. I'd been chained to my desk all day, and it was just an hour or so before sunset, not enough time to get my bike onto the car's roof, drive out to the hills and dart through the canyons in an effort to convince the lurking mountain lions that I was a tasty little bunny. (Rabbit is, as you know, the wild cat's version of candy corn.)

Instead, I decided on the 20-mile loop around Griffith Park, the nation's largest city park, with hundreds of acres of dirt roads wrapping around a 2,000-foot-high hillside. None of this terrain is open to mountain bikers because people on horses are stupid. Oops, I mean people on horses are just another user group that should be granted equal rights--to keep everyone else off their trails--even though there are only seven of them, all of whom, I'm sure, are acting not out of selfishness, but out of a genuine, if misguided, sense of civic spirit. (OK, that's taking it too far, even for this particular topic. Anybody on a horse in Griffith Park sucks.)

The ride into Griffith is lovely. It's short, with just a few heavily trafficked miles before you enter the park, where the number of cars decreases until the climbing begins; you pedal around a locked iron gate and get four miles of smoothly paved, winding, car-free uphill bliss.

I'm not a fast climber. But I would like to think, having ridden that same hill a billion times in the past decade, that I am what you would call a "wily veteran," which means that I actually do outsmart my (imagined) rivals as I make my way to a mountaintop finish in this, the penultimate stage of the 2006 Tour de...huh? What's this?

Somebody else is on the mountain.

Somebody's coming up behind me.

That bastard is trying to pass me.

I can't let that happen. I won't let that happen.

This can't be happening.

It happened.

On my favorite ride, in my own neighborhood, on a hill I own, I have been bested, humiliated, by a dude on the most anti-bike vehicle on earth--the overpriced, over-hyped, underperforming and completely lame Segway.

Do we all mean well enough? I think there's a connection between the person enjoying nature on a make-you-fat piece of garbage whose primary goal seems to be to evolve the species until our legs atrophy and rot off; an angry member of the Whole Foods Market frequent-shopper club with his face contorted in anger, driving the happiest, hippiest car since the original Volkswagen Beetle; and a mountain biker who throws his rig on the roof of his Subaru and stops at the 7-Eleven on the way to his ride to buy a giant plastic cup of soda pop.

The connection is that we're all frauds. Owning a mountain bike, a hybrid car, or listening dreamily to Garrison Keillor does not let you off the hook. If you're not, at least occasionally, doing a little trail maintenance, reading to some kids who aren't your own, or giving up your car for a day or two a week, even if that means forgoing the 20-gallon bucket of frosty-cold beverage delight you've become so accustomed to, then you're really just playing. Play is good, but it isn't good works.

But I'd like to think--despite the momentary lapses committed by my angry automotive pal, or the dude on the super-scooter who probably just wanted to hang out above the smog, or the guy in the Subaru who met five friends at the trailhead, each of whom lives within a mile of the other, and each of whom drove his own car--that good intentions can lead to genuine action.

I hope so. Because meaning well isn't good enough. You have to actually do something. I'll do my part: The next guy who screams at me from behind the wheel or knocks me over with a Segway is going to experience a soul-transforming event. I will invite him to ride my bike. I will read a book to him. I will even share my candy corn.